supportman

We use Sims here but I will be checking out Bromcom due to the recent issues with Sims in terms of their online replacements being delayed.

Capita share price dropped another 15% yesterday

For info the reason they are on USB drives is because this test is international and is run in many 3rd world countries without internet.

Ripped it fine with imtoo

We ran it on their AWS setup which just needs an internet connection, it was fine. Don't do it the USB way, its terrible.

Out of interest, how do you auto load the slide URL on the Raspberry Pi?

We just built a HTML Webpage and used google chrome in kiosk mode to auto refresh it every 6mins. Hardware is Intel Compute stick. Works very well and easy to update with new posters or live RSS feeds from out website and calendar. EDIT: tried XIBO but it had a shocking UI, poor templates, terrible documentation and needed a server to run it unless you paid for their cloud option.

What we know at the moment about Capita: - Sims 8 has been delayed by at least 6 months according to their latest Roadmap - Capita senior staff are leaving from their educational division - The only real way for their market share, in the UK at least is down as they had a virtual monopoly for the last 15 years - They are not attending the biggest educational IT show BETT - They have raised their prices on the current Sims 7 - Many schools are being rolled up into MATS which Capita do not have a real solution for yet - The Capita Share price has gone down 80% in the last year (this is for the whole group and hugely influenced by their debt but also Clarions collapse) - Capita's chief executive Jonathan Lewis has stated that the turnaround strategy involves cost cutting and not growth Sounds like a perfect storm to me. Certainly I will be looking around BETT this year with interest at competitors. I'm just surprised that there are still very few valid options.

Ahh ok not an issue then, just need to install Office 2019 which is what we do anyway

Tried with my MAK key but its not recognised, even tried with: Dism /online /Set-Edition: ServerDatacenter /AcceptEula /ProductKey: No luck, but I guess maybe I am trying to soon.

Not me, I have decided to go fully LTSC after testing both branches of release for a year now.

Normally I wouldn't support buying dedicated software to fill a need like this, but seeing her manually typing in 200 students details into Sims from a spreadsheet I have some sympathy!

But does this really apply to Capita...? Possibly the most used company in education?

Some good info here in the future ideas for the Windows team, basically they are going to carry on releasing feature updates every 6 months. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-re-releases-windows-server-2019/ LTSB/C surely the way forward now.

Next on my list is to streamline our admissions process, currently we have some kind of ancient custom web form that prospective parents fill out. It produces an excel spreadsheet that is then manually entered into Sims. Is there any commercial software available that does this? Preferably one that is an easy import into Sims.

And that's the big thing, No MAT is going to choose Sims because its simply not designed to be used over multiple schools. The only real choice that I can see is Bromcom or iSams really for these types of organisation, and their market shares is only going to increase as more schools move into MATs. Capita has a lot to loose.

Very true but they always launch new products each year and showcase what they have been working on. This year there appears to be nothing to showcase! I think that might be the real reason they are not showing up.

I'd recomend using different colours for different cable types. We use grey here for normal port connections, green for wireless POE, red for switch uplinks and blue for telephones. Short cables are a must as well. Its amazing how simple it all looks once you sort it out. EDIT: Oh and is that a cat5 cable splitter going into another cable splitter? Not a good idea....

ha! yes I do indeed Post edited thanks. We have both Education Edition and LTSB edition here and we have had far better results with LTSB. I will be rolling it out school wide in the future after the initial year of tests with both.

LTSB/C is the choice to go for if you want less pain and more stability. Just look at the recent 6 month release cycle to see why not to use the Educational version.

Make sure the photos are the correct aspect ratio before importing. Otherwise they will be stretched and blurred.

So I heard a rumour last week that Capita won't be at the BETT 2019 show... Could this perhaps be because of their delays in Sims 8 and the recent upheavals in senior staff? EDIT: Indeed they are missing from the suppliers list on the BETT website: https://www.bettshow.com/bett-suppliers-list?azletter=C

So I heard a rumour last week that Capita won't be at the BETT 2019 show... Could this perhaps be because of their delays in Sims 8 and the recent upheavals in senior staff? EDIT: Indeed they are missing from the suppliers list on the BETT website: https://www.bettshow.com/bett-suppliers-list?azletter=C

Finally! Lets hope they change google calendar as well, it kills my eyes!

Wow! Why would anyone buy something as outdated as that? I really don't get it.